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D&D
D&D last night was interesting. We learned some things that sound like they're going to be important, accompanied by new questions and mysteries. Ralph described part of it as "a visit from the exposition fairy", but he's too hard on himself. I liked the way this stuff was revealed to us. It's not the first time the DM has used actual props, either, and I think it works well.
Having an encounter in the middle of the night where we had to run somewhere else was interesting. A couple times I found myself thinking "I'll use my... oops, I don't have that here right now". I'm glad that for the most part I've been fairly detailed on my character sheet about what I carry where; it saves having to guess in situations where I would be motivated to be generous. And, in keeping with recent tradition, the fighter had yet another fight with no armor. Maybe he should try to buy some potions of Mage Armor or something.
(This encounter also led to some entertaining role-playing. There were three relevant NPCs at one point, so Ralph distributed a couple parts to players along with general instructions. That worked better than him trying to do conversations.)
I am really behind in my character's journal entries.
Annoyance: the player who chews up significant chunks of time with speculation and argument about how some spells work, when those decisions aren't going to affect what we do, is not in a position to complain about other players spending time with questions that do matter, like whether certain special equipment is available before we leave town. This is not the first time this player had done this sort of thing, and it's rude. (I handle my random spell-philosophy-and-mechanics issues between games, unless they really do matter right then.)
Having an encounter in the middle of the night where we had to run somewhere else was interesting. A couple times I found myself thinking "I'll use my... oops, I don't have that here right now". I'm glad that for the most part I've been fairly detailed on my character sheet about what I carry where; it saves having to guess in situations where I would be motivated to be generous. And, in keeping with recent tradition, the fighter had yet another fight with no armor. Maybe he should try to buy some potions of Mage Armor or something.
(This encounter also led to some entertaining role-playing. There were three relevant NPCs at one point, so Ralph distributed a couple parts to players along with general instructions. That worked better than him trying to do conversations.)
I am really behind in my character's journal entries.
Annoyance: the player who chews up significant chunks of time with speculation and argument about how some spells work, when those decisions aren't going to affect what we do, is not in a position to complain about other players spending time with questions that do matter, like whether certain special equipment is available before we leave town. This is not the first time this player had done this sort of thing, and it's rude. (I handle my random spell-philosophy-and-mechanics issues between games, unless they really do matter right then.)
no subject
I agree that the surprise-encounter in the night was an interesting variation, but not one that I would want to be the normal case. But it did have some urgency, and I don't feel that I always achieved that.
I agree that the handing-off-the-NPCs trick worked well, particularly because the players did good things with the roles they had assumed. I should practice that a bit more, because bringing the third guy into the conversation was somewhat contrived.
I quite agree with your annoyance.
setting moods
Well yeah; we do want to be prepared for at least some of our encounters. :-)
But it did have some urgency, and I don't feel that I always achieved that.
"We", not "I"; it's a group effort.
I might be off base here (I was never a good DM in my opinion and haven't done it at all in a long time), but I suspect some of that mood would have come automatically from setting. It's always hard to know where to set up descriptions and when to just move on. Once the alarm was sounded, I realized that we the players did not know basic things like: how far the duke's room was from us, what internal patrols or guardposts are normal here, layout (did our rooms have windows?), etc. (Some of these things might have been reasonably unknown to the characters, of course, but not all of them.) So it was urgent and I think that was conveyed; as soon as we woke up we jumped up, grabbed one item each (weapon, healing kit, belt w/pouch of spell stuff), and ran for it (with one detour so someone from the one room could pound on the door of the other to wake everyone up). Maybe it would have felt more urgent, as opposed to being "intellectually" urgent only, with more of a setting; I'm not sure. (The "crap, we have to get all the way to the other side of the building; hurry up!" effect.)
Once we got to the room I think we acted with appropriate haste; Turok and Kyle ran to engage the assassin, Larissa ran to block his escape while firing spells (possibly her bravest act to date?), and Liandra ran to heal the duke. Maybe we should have noticed the downed guard and maybe we shouldn't have; it wouldn't have likely affected our behavior, though. (The duke is the primary concern, not his guard.)
Anyway, this is hard because you can't just give us an info dump before the encounter; it has to build up so we won't be suspicious. And that's really hard. Maybe showing us rough maps of all towns/keeps/palaces/whatever that we spend time in -- filtered through what the characters reasonably know, of course -- would help set a consistent mental picture. With the right software, you could cons these up fairly easily from stock parts. (I sense a new Visual Thought palette coming on. :-) )